This post is based on the ForgeRock Documentation on configuring OpenIG as SAML 2.0 Service Provider. The video logs embedded just below this write up is a visual representation of what is already there in the document that I mentioned above. For a detailed study, please read through the documentation and then sit back, relax and watch the demonstration in the screen-cast below
SAML 2.0 as you probably know is a standard to exchange information between a SAML authority (a Identity Provider a.k.a IDP) and a SAML Consumer (a Service Provider a.k.a SP). In the demonstration that follows ForgeRock OpenAM acts as an Identity Provider and ForgeRock OpenIG acts as a Service Provider. So the authentication of a user is done by the IDP, who will then send a piece of information (Assertion) to the SP that could contain the attributes of user from the user’s profile in the IDP DataStore. SP will then use the information thus obtained (Assertion) to take further action (like giving access to the user etc.)
There are two ways of getting this done:
(i) SP initiated SSO
(ii) IDP initiated SSO
In simple words, in a SP initiated SSO, the user contacts the Service Provider, who in turns gets in touch with the Identity Provider, who would validate the user credentials and then exchange a piece of information (Assertion) that could contain the user attributes to the Service Provider. Whereas a IDP initiated SSO, the IDP will authenticate the user, and would then send an unsolicited message (Assertion) to the SP, who would then take further action (like giving access to the user etc.)
The following two illustrations might give a rough idea:
In our story (above in the illustration and below in the video), a user authenticates against ForgeRock OpenAM (IDP), who will send then an assertion (containing user’s mail and employeenumber attribute) to ForgeRock OpenIG (Service Provider), who will apply filters (like extracting the attributes from assertion and posting it as username and password) to post the user’s credentials to a protected application (Minimal HTTP Server)
If you’ve got a vague picture on what’s discussed above, I’d believe it’ll be clearer after watching the video below:
Enjoy!